This week’s leadership message is a video blog from Rob Webster

What else has been happening this week?

Personalisation care event

More than 100 people working in NHS services, councils and community organisations came together today on Monday at a special event in Leeds to discuss working in partnership with people to further improve their health and wellbeing with and for them. The event, organised by West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health and Care Partnership, covered the importance of self-management and what this means for people delivering and receiving care. Areas discussed included the support people need to manage their own health, the importance of better conversations with health care workers and the added value of having more control and freedom over personal health budgets to meet their needs. You can find out more here. The slides are available on our website here.

Long Term Plan Editorial Group

An editorial group for the development of our Partnership’s five year plan met on Tuesday. This is part of the work of the NHS Long Term Plan. There is an expectation that all Partnerships like ours will produce a five year plan by autumn 2019. There is really good alignment between the Long Term Plan and our regional ambitions, as we set out in our ‘Next Steps to Better Health and Care for Everyone’ document (Feb 2018). The long term plan is a framework not a blueprint and there is some flexibility for us to tailor our response to local needs and priorities. Our plan will articulate our collective ambitions for the people of West Yorkshire and Harrogate.

We continue to focus on collaboration to improve outcomes locally – working better together at every level and putting the person at the centre of all we do. Over the coming months, alongside our stakeholders, workforce and communities, we will work through what the NHS Long Term Plan means for us. We will work with our WY&H programme leads to identify gaps between the strategy we have in place and the Long Term Plan. The draft plan will be shared with Partners, the Partnership Board and stakeholders, such as HWB chairs and governing boards for their views ahead of publication in the autumn (2019). It will set out the ‘positive difference our Partnership is making’, our vision for the future and what we are doing collectively as partners across the area to make this a reality for those we serve.

There was also a meeting with West Yorkshire and Harrogate communication and engagement leads with Healthwatch colleagues on Thursday about the potential to do some high level engagement work around the themes of personalisation and digitalisation. We will keep you posted as the work develops.

The development work of the plan will also be discussed at the first meeting of our Partnership Board in June.

West Yorkshire and Harrogate System Oversight and Assurance Group (SOAG)

SOAG met on Thursday. This group has been established to take an overview of progress with our shared priority programmes, and to agree collective action to help tackle shared challenges. The group heard about progress being made around West Yorkshire and Harrogate programmes of work, including cancer, maternity, hospitals working together, and support for unpaid carers and digital. There was also an overview on finance and the planning process.

National communication and engagement event

Communication and engagement colleagues attended a national event on Wednesday to share good practice and learning across all 44 partnerships – which are also known as STPs and integrated care systems. Delegates welcomed Dr Claire Fuller, the CEO Lead for the Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership. Surrey is one of the healthiest places to live in England and people are living longer than in other areas of the country. One of the area’s they are focusing on is the first 1000 days of a child’s life. Claire spoke about the importance of good staff engagement. The Partnership has established a virtual academy - a network for championing professional leadership and engagement. This is all about building relationships through connections. Claire talked about their work on clinical and citizen engagement panels.

There was an interesting presentation from Sir Peter Timpson about ethics, leadership and values and how we ‘communicate through culture’. Trust and supporting people to ‘just get on with their jobs’ and feeling part of the ‘Timpson’ family were key messages.

Various workshops took place; including engaging staff as a whole system – timely given that the NHS recently published latest NHS staff survey results. The 2018 Staff Survey of NHS trusts and foundation trusts showed that more than seven in ten staff would recommend their organisation to their family and friends for treatment, a proportion that has increased every year for the past four years. Other topics included technology and tools for engaging staff; and staff champions. Big shout out to Jude Tipper, Head of Communications for South West Yorkshire Partnership Foundation NHS Trust who ran a workshop on harnessing a social movement and her organisation’s ‘All of us Staff Campaign’.

Finally, there was a panel discussion on the NHS Long Term Plan with Imelda Redmond CBE, National Director for Healthwatch England and a presentation from Donna Hall, former CEO for Wigan Council about building a health and care partnership with communities. You may recall from an earlier blog that Donna visited West Yorkshire and Harrogate in February to talk with leaders about the Wigan Deal. Wigan is the happiest place to live in Greater Manchester and satisfaction rates from employees’ survey are the highest they have ever been. You can read this here.

GP online consultation project

The project group met this week to discuss the roll out of the GP online solution. There have also been meetings with the following GP practices on the next steps:

• Greenhead Family Practice
• Meltham Group Practice
• The Waterloo Practice (Huddersfield)
• Spring Gables Surgery (Harrogate)
• Health Care First (Wakefield)

  This involved presenting a demo for the site and the next steps for implementing the GP online consultation solution.